ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces the case of Occupy Sandy activists’ collaboration with marginalized communities in relief and recovery work in Rockaway, New York City, after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. As an emergent group, Occupy Sandy represented a unique crisis management actor deeply aware of and conscious not to reproduce existing social inequalities. Initially activists contributed to empowerment for marginalized and storm-affected communities in this post-disaster participatory space. However, as relief turned into long-term recovery, Rockaway residents resisted the activists’ aim to empower them. Thus, this story speaks to the dilemma of empowerment initiated by outsiders, when true empowerment is believed to come from within the marginalized communities themselves. It also questions the potential for social and political change that disasters bring about as they lay bare structural inequalities and potentially mobilize marginalized communities. This approach shed a more nuanced light on social vulnerability, a topic usually silenced within the techno-managerial, rationalistic, and utilitarian logics that undergird the field of disaster management.
